‘Doctor Who’ Recap: Who Are You?

Clara is trapped in the Tardis and the Doctor only has 30 minutes to save her in this week’s “Journey to the Center of the Tardis.”
The Doctor is teaching Clara how to fly the Tardis. He takes down the shielding to make it easier. Just then, a salvage ship sees them. When the shields are dropped, the salvage team captures the Tardis, causing damage. Clara asks the Doctor if there’s a button he can press to fix it. A small object rolls into the control room. Clara picks it up, but it burns her hand and she drops it.
The brothers who run the salvage ship try to break into the Tardis, but not even the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan could get through those doors. The Doctor wakes up in the cargo area. He fell out of the Tardis as it crashed, but Clara is trapped inside.
He lets the brothers into the Tardis and locks the four of them inside. He sets the self-destruct and tells them the ship will blow up unless they help find his missing companion.
Clara, meanwhile, wakes up in a hallway filled with debris. She opens one door but finds a fire behind it. She runs back and tries another corridor. Clara wanders into the Doctor’s junk room, finding trinkets from past adventures (and episodes). A severely burned creature, later identified as a time zombie, chases her. She passes the pool and a telescope before hiding in the library.
There on a pedestal sits a large tome, “The History of the Time War.” Clara flips to a random page and reads. “So that’s who,” she says. A noise comes from behind her and she ducks down to hide from a time zombie. She escapes and finds her way to the control room.
The Doctor and the brothers split up. One starts dismantling the control room until he hears the voices of past Doctors and companions. He searches for the source, but only finds a time zombie. It kills him.
Another brother tries to steal one of the Tardis’s valuable circuits, causing the ship to fight back. The Doctor and brothers go back to the control room where Clara should be, but isn’t. The Doctor realizes she is out of sync with them, time-wise, and pulls her through.
The Doctor deactivates the timer, which was never really a self-destruct. Unfortunately, the engines really are exploding. The Doctor, Clara and the two remaining brothers travel toward the engine room to see if they can repair the ship. As they move toward the center of the Tardis it becomes clear that time is fractured all around them. Clara is also still nursing her burnt hand, which seems to have a message written on it.
They run into the time zombies again and duck into the Eye of Harmony room for safety. Only the Eye of Harmony is a star, trapped in the Tardis, that will kill them all if they don’t leave soon. The zombies pound at the door and the brothers’ gadget reveals the zombie is a future version of Clara.
The Doctor tells Clara he’s sorry he couldn’t keep her from dying again. She wants more answers, but there’s no time. The two brothers struggle against a time zombie that is two people fused together. The Doctor says if they can avoid touching each other, they can change the future. Unfortunately they are unable to stop themselves and become the double zombie.
The Doctor and Clara finally escape to the engine room, but all they find is a giant cliff. The Doctor confronts Clara, demanding to know who she is. She says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and the Doctor realizes she’s telling the truth. He also realizes the only way to the engine is to jump from the cliff. Geronimo!
The engine is in pieces, being kept from exploding by the Tardis freezing it in time. The Doctor takes Clara’s hand and is able to read what her burn says: “Big Friendly Button.” The Doctor finds the moment they crashed and gets ready to throw the button, the object that burned Clara, through a time crack to prevent all these events from ever happening.
Clara doesn’t want time to be reset, though. She now knows the Doctor’s name. The Doctor tells her it’s better to have secrets. He resets everything. He and Clara and the three brothers are all safe again, as if the past day never happened.
What did you think of the episode? Were you excited to see more of the mysterious Tardis? Who is the Doctor? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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